Afterhours

A White Christmas

It's Christmas Eve here, and snowing again. More snow than I've seen since I moved to the Vancouver area about a decade ago. Transit's a mess, and no-one here appears to be responsible for clearing sidewalks – I had a great workout yesterday lugging home Christmas groceries – my legs were aching from all the sliding around. Taxis were overwhelmed and impossible even to call – it seems that everyone, including me, decided to do last-minute shopping yesterday rather than wait for the next dump of snow coming down today. It looks lovely now; big, soft flakes just floating down outside my window. But unfortunately, this city just doesn't know how to deal with snow, or rather doesn't really believe it needs to, since the snow will get rained away in a week or so.

A Merry Christmas to everyone reading this, and a few photos for the record, from my balcony.

Vacation, Day 21: Labour Day

The day was gray but warm. We went out on the barge for a bit.

Jacob was brave and let Daddy Scott take him into the water. Hated it at first, then loved it.

Mom Tina keeping Jacob and Laurel warm after a dip.

Sister Sharon and brother Mike shooting the breeze.

Typical Grand Pond scenery

Home base

Spent the rest of the day and evening enjoying family, playing cards and eating - I dread getting on the scale in a few days. Today (Tuesday) is the last day of my vacation, and I'm already in recovery mode.

A bent-over tree nearby. The slant of the tree is due to the prevailing wind direction, not to any current wind. There are whole forests of these trees visible along the highways in Newfoundland. Weird enough looking to record in a photo.

Vacation, Day 19: Water, ice cream and fire

Back at Grand Pond with family, including my brother Mike just arrived yesterday from Calgary. A beautiful afternoon, weather-wise.

Laurel and grandma relax in the tube.


Laurel, Jack and Jacob contemplate the joys of ice cream.

An amazingly warm and wind-less evening. We sat around the fire, made s'mores and talked until 2 a.m.

Vacation, Day 17: Family.

At my niece Anne Marie's place. Typical RDF weather today (rain, drizzle and fog). Walked over to the university bookstore, and got some interesting foggy photos.

Dead tree

Kents Pond

Meanwhile, on the home front, Jack helps with the dishes


while Daddy Brad makes a chocolate cake to die for.

Vacation, Day 15: St. John's

Wandered around downtown St. John's today and bought music and other stuff. I could write volumes about how the city has changed since I last lived there (c. 1969), but it's late, so just a few photos – by no means representative of the area, just things that caught my interest.

Part of a historical mural on Duckworth Street. I took this one from across the street, and a few cars actually slowed down to avoid ruining the shot. Where else but in St. John's ...

A row of houses showing typical old St. John's architecture.

Detail of a bronze at the end of George Street.. "The design ... for this sculpture was meant to show the many different aspects of artistic expression that exists within the province and tie all of them together with some sort of meaning." (the artist).

Some graffiti.

And a photo of the "narrows" (the entrance of St. John's harbour), with the usual hovering bank of fog threatening to descend on the city.

Vacation, Days 11 and 12

Day 11: beautiful weather again. Started the day with kite fly from the barge.

The kite looked fine up there, but then pulled a Charlie Brown and entangled itself in an unclimbable 30 foot tree in the middle of a thickly forested island. Rescue plans, to be carried out at some later date, have mentioned the use of a chainsaw to lop said malevolent tree into firewood. We shall see.

Swam and vegetated in the afternoon, then went to a 25th anniversary party, with great food and a live band. No photos, but I do have one of the "morning-after" barge cruise.

My nephews Scott and Joe arrived with families and dogs, on their way back from a camping trip.

I'm now encamped at Joe's house in Paradise, with - yay! - high-speed internet.

Vacation, Day 10: Northern Bay Sands

We went to Northern Bay Sands park for a picnic. Lots of people there, but not many brave enough to swim in the cold water (we waded).

A few interesting sand castles

I concentrated mostly on scenic shots.

And on interesting weeds.

And sand patterns.

Vacation, Day 8: Driving around

Not many photos today; here's one from near Carbonear.

Vacation, Day 7: Relaxing

Lovely weather today. I spent much of the day napping and otherwise vegetating.

We went for a swim. "Bathing beauties of 192?"

Sunset over Grand Pond

and some fire-watching.

This one's here just because I like the interesting arrangement of rocks and grass:

Vacation, Day 6: Nature

Beautiful day, weather-wise. We went for a tramp around the Salmonier Nature Park and I practiced with my new telephoto converter. It doesn't appear to work very well in sunny conditions, certainly not as well as would a proper telephoto lens (which replaces a regular camera lens instead of just fitting over it). Got a few good photos.

Snowy owl

Perigrine falcon

Otter

Arctic fox


Mama moose and baby moose

We saw lots of other animals – lynx, marmot, other owls. And a procession of Canada geese.